28-6-2014: It’s finished! It’s huge! It’s georgeous! I just washed it and it’s now lying outside to dry. I’m so happy :-)

26-6-2014: Finished knitting! Just have to put the whole thing together now.

19-6-2014: I did it; cut my shawl in two. And it didn’t fall apart. Phew! My very first steek.
Knitting the final border is going much faster than I expected. I’m already at a quarter. So not much longer till it is finished :-D

16-6-2014: Finished the top-border after two months or 91 hours of knitting. Now it is time for the scary bit: my first ever steek…

3-6-2014: 578 stitches.

2-6-2014: Yeah! Finished main part today. Can start on top border tomorrow. :-)

22-5-2014: Just finished the fourth row of flowers. Just the fifth to finish before I can start on the border. After reading some experiences from others knitting Christel Seyfarth shawl’s I think that means I’m about halfway.

16-5-2014: Started the fifth and final row of flowers today!

11-5-2014: Finished the third row of flowers! It’s taking about 15 minutes now to finish one row of knitting. And I’ve got about 1 1/2 rows of flowers to go…

10-5-2014: Making steady progress. Just started on the fourth row of flowers. I’ve been knitting for about 24 hours in total now.

24-4-2014: Second row of flowers finished! This is taking more and more time, because the rows are increasing quite rapidly. But it is so beautiful. I’m very happy ;-)

20-4-2014: Finished my fist flower! This is so much fun :-D

20-4-2014: I frogged it all. And I’m glad I did. After knitting all day yesterday, I’m now at the point I was when I discovered my mistake. And it looks so much better! It was definitely worth the extra work.

19-4-2014: Nearly finished my first flower. But looking at the picture of the finished shawl I notice I’ve made a mistake… I just knit the one flower, but now I see I had to knit a tiny bit of the flowers next to it too. In the pattern you just see the one flower so I didn’t think about that. Now the big question; just ignore it (and probably regret it ever after :-() or frog a bit (about half) and start over…
First I’m going to make myself a better (bigger) version of the pattern, so I at least can avoid these mistakes in the future!

17-4-2014: Just finished winding the purple magic ball. And I’m not happy. One of the colours is just not right in my opinion. It is too blue (the one in the lower left in the picture). So I dived into my stash and found some nice purple that goes much better with the rest. I will just have to substitute it while knitting, because the ball is already finished ;-)
Now on with the greens. In the picture it looks like there is also one green ball that is much different than the rest, but in real life that is not the case. All the colours are much more green than blue. It’s just very hard to get the colour right in the picture.

16-4-2014: Yarn and book have arrived! I’ve just started making the magic balls. A lot of work, but a lot of fun too.

14-4-2014: Received information that my order will be put in the mail today. So with a bit of luck it can arrive tomorrow!

13-4-2014: I’ve wanted to make a Christel Seyfarth shawl for a long time. Only problem; I could not choose. So many great designs! And then I saw a picture of the Damask Lily from the Fanøstrik book and I knew what I had been waiting for. The colours are great and really ‘me’. And I love the big, bold pattern of the lilies. I ordered the book and a yarn kit today.

Things I learned:

No more magic balls. At least not when knitting a triangular shape. The repeats were very long in the beginning, and at the end I was happy when I could knit one complete row with the same colour. So I started mixing two balls in the end to make longer repeats.

I am not completely satisfied with the way the corners turned out. Especially the lower point. Don’t know how to do it better next time.

This is probably not a new idea, but I discovered it myself: at the turning point of the borders you have to purl one row. I don’t like purling, especially with over 500 stitches to go… Then I thought; why not just turn the whole thing around, and knit one row backwards! It will look like a purled row from the front side. And it worked perfectly, with the turning point hidden in the steek. Very clever, if I may say so myself ;-p